Hornets Blown Out by Thunder…

Well, that was fun. Let’s avoid the negatives for now. There’s plenty of time for that later. We won the 2nd half! And Davis quite literally rebounded from Wednesday’s poor effort on the glass, with 11 boards, including 5 offensive. And Ryan Anderson was a perfect 3-3 from deep, so that’s nice. And, uh…

Yeah. Some observations:

The Hornets inverted their usual modus operandi, having only one successful and three losing ones (let’s not pretend we “won” the 4th, going against a lineup of Thabeet/Jones/Jackson/Lamb/Liggins).

Ibaka asserted his rim protecting dominance early, gathering all three of his blocks in the 1st quarter; Davis and Rivers both managed to score a bucket over him, but on the whole he intimidated most drives from going all the way to the rim

Davis was usually matched up against Ibaka, and his frailty was painfully obvious; he struggled to get his usual “hustle” looks around the rim, and his jumpshot was not there tonight. At one point, Kevin Martin rotated on him in the post and Davis didn’t attempt to back him down; that must (and will) change.

Greivis Vasquez was surprisingly effective defending Russell Westbrook, but since no one thought it might be a good idea to guard Durant, he was able to rack up a season high 12 assists.

Kevin Durant is good at basketball

So is Kevin Martin; he scored 27 total, including 22 in his first ten minutes played. Rotations weren’t particularly good, but he still managed to hit quite a few fairly contested jumpers. Unlike Harden’s ball-handling dissection of the Hornets on Wednesday, Martin killed them from spot up shooting. He’s certainly adds a dynamic scoring element off the bench for the Thunder that, while not similar in style to Harden, is so far similar in productivity and efficiency.

Austin Rivers was 4-8 from the field, and 1-2 from deep; his shooting woes seem to be slowly falling away, although he decided it had been too long since he last sprained an ankle, and came up limping in the 2nd half. He managed to return later in the game.

The Thunder turned the ball over 13 times, but the Hornets only managed 8 fast break points. Vasquez looked particularly slow tonight in transition. Coupled with their inability to create in the half-court, and this game was over by halftime. Eric Gordon, where art thou?

Westbrook took the night off because Durant and Martin were cooking......Hornet sare not a good JUMP SHOOTING TEAM ( 2pt att's)as they hover at the 30-32% mark.....they also do not shoot the 3-ball well.....defenders can stay at home thus you see how the ball movement is hampered...vs OKC the ball and player actions were not consistent.....make some jumpers and the defenders must honor you...also I've have said this many time..." who are your off the dribble attackers?"......
Sometimes its a very simple answer....."If you can't shoot as a team all else slows down"

I'd rather the ball at least move along the perimeter between the guards/SF/Anderson when that 2nd unit is in than one guy running around with the ball in his hands. At least with ball movement you have a chance to shot fake, get a defender with momentum out of position, or draw fouls.
If Roberts can't learn to run an offense at the point, than he should be playing off ball to a PG that can run an offense. He looks lost even in pick and roll situations, which are the most basic sets for a PG to run. You have 3 options, kick it to the big man, take the jumper off the screen, or drive. Boxscores and assist numbers be damned, our 2nd unit was infinitely better with a seemingly confidentless Rivers (which is odd in itself), than Roberts.
Simply put, I'd rather purposeless passing than purposeless dribbling.

Does anyone else want to pull their hair out every time they watch Roger Mason and Brian Roberts step on the floor. The former is painfully bad on defense and the latter is painfully bad with the ball in his hands (which there is just way too much of to be honest). The combination quite literally has been a disaster zone for our bench. We need Rivers backing up Vasquez or we are going to have more 2nd Q and late 3rd/early 4th slumps like Wed.
I just remember early in the season, our ball movement was impeccable. It was fun to watch, with open shots aplenty. Our 2nd unit ball movement has bogged down to watching this idiot run around with the ball at the arc for 14 seconds before taking a dumb shot or passing it late in the clock for another dumb shot. Even when they go in, I can't be happy. It's just TERRIBLE basketball. I would quite literally rather any other player on our team running point on our 2nd unit than Roberts. At least the ball would move.

I think it's time we traded for a good PG. This GV experiment is not going to work, he can't get us into a good rythm on offense. Unless we adopt the triangle offense, not having a true PG is killing our offense. We need a quick PG who can penetrate and create shots.

Davis has a great start to the season but is falling back to earth the last two games. Davis shot 4-14 while Ibaka shot 7-9, Durant shot 9-12, and every other Thunder SF, PF, and C shot 50%.
Our frontline, still a Hornet strength, isn't capable of hanging with a high quality front line like the Thunder's right now.

Anthony Davis needs to gain weight and muscle with urgency. Tonight the Unibrow showed a clear disadvantage in the physical duel with Ibaka.
And I noticed a curious thing: is it just me or Kevin Martin always performs great games against the Hornets? We have to think about why this happens... Incidentally, I thought our defense was terrible in the 1st half. It lacked energy. I felt like our team was quietly accepting everything that happened in the game. And then... It was too late.
Hey, Russ? You're still clamoring for Eric Gordon? I'm sorry. Now he should be in Los Angeles enjoying his millions $$$ and watching a baseball college game while the Hornets suffers with a poor offense and easily falls to the OKC Thunder. Will he return to New Orleans? Or will prolong his injury to the fullest?

Some thoughts:
Looking at the stat lines, I can't believe that we out-rebounded the Thunder.
Did the Bees forget that people are allowed to shoot from beyond the arc?
PASS THE FRICKING BALL!!!
Does anyone know what the 1st half stats were?